Second Life
by c1araoswa1d
Summary: (Tumblr Prompt) The Doctor and Clara's daughter has just regenerated and they do their best to help her through it.


The soft ginger waves gave way to a thick chestnut mane and the dark eyes brightened like a clear blue sky; the length of gangly limbs remained though, thin and pale as ever. Clara tried her best to smile, but her tears continued to fall as she watched their only daughter from within the strong arms of the Doctor – arms that locked her back in a moment she longed to hold her baby girl through a pain she couldn't imagine – and she waited as those heavily lashed eyelids blinked several times in contemplation.

 _How did this new body feel_?

Clara wanted to ask, her fingers shifting around the Doctor's arms, beginning to pull them away and for a moment he resisted and she knew: he was frozen in the same terror she was. Because seventeen was much too young to be experiencing a first regeneration. Only seventeen years alive in the universe and she'd already lived through her own death.

The girl before them, standing in torn jeans and a scorched t-shirt from a planet and time she should never have known raised her eyes to look at them and her lips twitched up into a confused smile as her brow wrinkled. She exhaled and her body bent towards them, words stumbling from her mouth in a voice deeper than she'd had before, "Mum, I feel different... _dad_..." and then she began to crumple.

Arms that had been wrapped so tightly around Clara came loose, like a snapped rubber band, and they both bolted forward to catch their girl, a chorus of anguished sobs and gasps as they landed in a heap on the ground of that old rock quarry. Clara stroked at her daughter's reborn face, laughing at the newly placed dimples and the thinning of her eyebrows. She watched the girl stare up at her, as though awaiting approval, as Clara ran a thumb along the higher cheekbone of her left cheek as her fingers traced around the different shape of her ear.

"You will always be beautiful," she assured, watching her daughter's lop-sided grin. That hadn't changed, and she laughed as she bent to kiss her forehead, eyes closing to drop heavy tears of relief into the girl's hair as she listened to her breaths, hand dropping to rest itself against her daughter's chest to feel the two hearts thudding away.

Fear and change urging them on.

Her own heart raged within her and she felt the Doctor's palm seek her out to rub gently at her left shoulder before he gave it a squeeze. How many times, she though sadly, did they speak of this moment? How many times did they think it would come a day so many years into the future that Clara wouldn't be around to see it? She could remember, easily, holding her as an infant, securely in her arms as she rocked slowly in a chair, the Doctor standing nearby telling her some story of an adventure.

" _How long do you suppose she'll look like you_?"

The question had come softly, quietly, and had brought his rush of words to a stop as his fingers twisted in front of him and he looked upon them sadly. He'd told her then it would be too long into the future to consider, a laugh escaping his trembling lips. Because they harbored the same fear, she knew then.

Clara wished she'd been able to see that first face grow old, but she knew wishes weren't promises and she sat up straighter to help her daughter up against her. To watch the girl look down on new hands and arms, to touch a spot where a scar had sat for most of her life from an attack by Cybermen as a toddler. She listened to her rough laugh, and the way she hummed to test her voice. She watched her lick her teeth and grimace as her fingers moved up to give her face a quick once over before she tugged at her hair and laughed.

"Not ginger anymore, Celeste," the Doctor lamented, and they shared a simple laugh over an old joke. Clara looked to the two of them, smiling weakly at one another, and she thought back to all the days their little girl had sat perched up on his shoulders on the console, long waves hanging over his head to tease him.

" _Daddy, you're ginger now_!"

"No," their daughter replied, snatching Clara out of her memories, as she turned her bright eyes to her mother to state, "Now it's like mum's."

They shared a smile, the Doctor watching them with a sly grin of his own as Clara told her softly, "And your eyes are like your fathers."

Celeste frowned then, momentarily, before looking to the man who understood – he'd always said how much he loved her eyes. He loved them because they were her mother's. He palmed her cheek and kissed her forehead and shook his head, telling her without words that it made no difference to him whose eyes she held, or whose hair, or whose nose or even if she radically changed one day to no longer hold resemblance to either of them, he would still love her just the way she was.

On a sigh, and with a quick glance at Clara, the Doctor breathed, "You will never look any different to me."

Laughing, Clara nodded, and she looked her daughter over, understanding that the differences made no difference really and she felt the tension easing in all of them. "Regeneration just means a new case," she told her soothingly, hand stroking over her hair, "Same software underneath; same parents here loving you."

Celeste huffed in amusement as she leaned into Clara, arms coming up weakly to hold her. She took a long breath as Clara kissed the top of her head and Clara smiled with the Doctor as the girl uttered on a nod, "Same ridiculous kid, loving you right back."


End file.
